Jesus vs. Pomo

How do you talk about Jesus to a world that thinks it's already made up it's mind?

I've been reading about John the baptist lately, as well as the deciples. An interesting look on things, kind of the 'bookends' of Jesus life. It's refreshing, becuase thier job was so clear cut. No one knew about Jesus, they hadn't even heard of him. And when they did hear, it was important and people changed.

Nowadays, who hasn't heard about Jesus? And while were on the subject, who hasn't heard about the crap that's been done in his name?

I was brought to thinking about this a week or so ago when I was sitting in Concepts and Theories. Ella, who sits next to me each week, asked if I was religious.

I HATE that question. It's loaded.

I can say yes, assuming that she simply means, "do you believe in God?" but becuase I said yes to the word 'religious' that also means I could fall into a lump of 'religious' people who vote republican, burn abortion clinics, and can't survive without buying another testamint.

I can say no, simply becuase I don't consider myself to part of the above definition, but also deny the way Jesus has been changing me and the relationship we've had for half a decade now.

My response went as such:

"yes... um... no.... uh... I think Jesus is awesome."

That's right. 5 years to prepare a response, and that's still the best I can do. I almost choked on the cheese.

In a way though, it's very true. I do think Jesus is awesome, but not 'awesome' as a meaningless superlative. I didn't mean for it to sound like it came off a bumper sticker, or a t-shirt shold at a mega-Christian-conference

So here's the full answer, just to explain myslef a little.

Jesus is awesome. Awesome in that there have been moments where I'm left speechless at the things he does. When I try to read through his life in the Bible, and set aside all notions of religiousity, I'm somtimes stunned. This man wasn't someone off of a stained glass window. This guy was reolutionary. Not revolutionary like Napoleon or Che, but revolutionary in a completely new way. He was 100% for the people, which no person after him or before him ever was.

I met him several years ago, and my immediate reaction was confusion and then blame. He pointed out a lot of things that were wrong in my life, and instead of accepting it and changing, I offloaded to others and judged them (some of you reading this will perhaps remember this of me).

The most difficult thing for me to get my ego around was the fact that this Christ guy wasn't an impersonal being. He actually wanted to get to know me, and have me get to know him. This is the part where most people check out of my story, because it goes a step beyond convention, and you're then forced to make a decision of whether or not I'm telling the truth, or just spouting my mouth off.

Though at one time, I very much viewed Jesus as this distant character like something out of a 50's biblical blockbuster, I came to realize that this conception leads one to miss out on just who he was, how amazing he was, and how real he is.